They call it ‘iPod oblivion’ — when you’re talking on a cell phone or listening to an iPod while crossing the street. “It can be a distraction you know but most times I stay alert … I’m aware of my surroundings,” iPod user John Palmer said. But Albany thinks it’s a problem, and so Senator…
Quite bluntly, if your web application can’t easily be adapted as a classic text adventure, your application has serious problems on multiple levels. Applications that can’t be easily adapted likely suffer from application structure and design problems and UI dependency, to organizational politics and bad decisions. —Michael Buffington —Your Web App as a Text Adventure (ETech…
—New Model 500 height adjustable workstation: ideal for standing, seated or supine work positions. (Office Organix) Strap me down, slap an IV in my arm, and I’ll get all my work done — all of it! Similar:Quick visit to see my mother and siblings.Students are trusting software like this to do their work.A former student working…
Recently, I tried to help a faculty member at my college submit a grant proposal to a National Institutes of Health competition. I soon discovered that one can no longer submit a grant to NIH directly. One has to submit it through Grants.gov. I estimate that it took me more than 25 hours to try…
I have seen it, touched it, and played with it. The final industrial design prototype for the XO, the device that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative is going to start shipping to countries across the world this summer. AMD hosted a luncheon on Monday to give the press an update on the project,…
In an optical or physical sense, the capabilities of modern day computers have really put “reality” immersion within reach. Yet, this aspect of immersion–the “wow it looks so real” factor–has become a crutch and the only pillar of the immersion experience for which most games aim. Maybe it’s easier to sell or produce en masse.…
Does it matter that most films offer such an unrealistic depiction of usability? Mainly, no. A movie’s purpose is entertainment, not task performance. So, go ahead and employ user interfaces and interaction techniques that are entertaining and would never work in the real world. Films are littered with so many other unrealistic plot details: you’d…
Underneath the veneer of “natural language,” Inform 7 actually has a pretty rigorous syntax, and it can be very picky about how you word certain kinds of phrases. But then there are other areas where the syntax is very loose, and it’s easy to be fooled into thinking that you can write your game in…
Just as you can’t be too rich or too thin, I’d always thought, so you can’t have too many tools on your Swiss Army knife – but that was before I took delivery of the new Giant Swiss Army knife. Grotesque, if superbly engineered, the Giant weighs nearly a kilogram and features 85 devices in…
Someday, much sooner than you’d like, that shiny new toy you just bought will break. When it happens, you’ll swear, you’ll cry — then you’ll sigh and open your wallet.–Kris Wagner —Gadgets Built to Fail (Wired) “They time them so when you finally paid for them, they’re used up.” — Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman…
Less intimidating and frustrating than the conference, more “human” than the margin note, audio commentary possesses the potential to become a space where real teaching and learning can emerge in the midst of feedback. —Sommers and Sipple —A Heterotopic Space Haven’t looked closely at this, but I’m blogging it for access later. Since I find…
The 99 tips in this article make up the best in email practices. From how to ethically use the ‘BCC:’ to what attachments will make your mobile emailing compatible with everyone else’s, this list covers everything you need to know about emailing. —Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips (IT Security) I don’t really care…
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act may give shopkeepers the power to force Linden Labs to delete copied items, but it will not provide financial compensation to the victims of infringement unless they file a federal lawsuit. Given the cost of these virtual goods, there aren’t going to be many infringements worth the expense of suing.…
My robot came configured to make 384 donuts per hour automatically. —Donut Robot of Love 2000 (adw3345) How can you not read something that includes a lead like that? Via MeFi. Similar:Quick visit to see my mother and siblings.Students are trusting software like this to do their work.A former student working in SEO shared this. I…
A project implemented by the European Union is currently seeing seven cities and regions clear-cutting their forest of traffic signs. Ejby, in Denmark, is participating in the experiment, as are Ipswich in England and the Belgian town of Ostende. The utopia has already become a reality in Makkinga, in the Dutch province of Western Frisia.…
You know, I’ve loved Firefox for a long, long time. I can’t live without my tabbed browsing, I’m literally lost without it, but with Firefox 2.0 someone at Mozilla has totally dropped the ball when it comes to the most compelling feature I use Firefox for, and that’s the tabs feature. —Duncan Riley —2 things…
One day when we’re literally halfway through SQ4, Mark and I were called into Ken’s office. We were asked what we thought about using the (dumbass) point-and-click interface that they were using, in I guess it was King’s Quest 5 then, and what we thought about putting it in SQ4. We said we wanted to…
I’ll return to my analysis of Kairos as a project identity later. But first I’d like to consider one other aspect of Jerz’s critique–attention to audience. Kairos’s design (referring to Issue 5.1), Jerz says tongue-in-cheek, “has drastically improved,” making it “no longer an easy target.” The only mention of audience in Jerz’s critique is when…
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. —Jakob Nielsen —Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute (Useit.com) Similar:Students are trusting software like this to do their work.A former student working in SEO shared this. I…
Is this the way we will all be ‘enjoying’ our television programmes and computer games in the future? —One giant step for home entertainment? (Daily Mail) This will exercise your neck muscles, that’s for sure. Wait a minute… someone forgot to put the flat broom head on top of that helmet. Ohh this makes me angry.…